News Roundup: The Impending Death of the Password

Last week at FindBiometrics we continued to unpack our Year in Review 2016 results—looking at the most interesting modalities and the impending death of the password—while biometric elections, innovations in mobility, and advanced security made up the bulk of the headlines.

Here is a look back on last week’s top stories in global identity management:

Year in Review 2016: Top Applications and The Death of the Password

Our 14th annual FindBiometrics Year in Review continued last week as we examined our survey respondents’ choices for most interesting areas of application for biometrics in 2016: financial services, consumer applications, and border control. We also checked in on the long-forecasted death of the password, seeing what our respondents thing about a post-password 2020, and outlining some of the challenges we need to address before that future can be a reality.

Stay tuned today and tomorrow as we bring our Year in Review coverage to a close.

Catching up with BIO-key

Last week we published an interview with BIO-key chairman and CEO Mike DePasquale. The conversation starts on the topic of BIO-key’s newly launched biometric padlocks, and the consumer-facing market in general, before moving on to the company’s major authentication service contract announced in December, and more. Catch up with BIO-key by reading the interview below.

Voter and Civil ID

Elections were in the headlines last week, with Zimbabwe clarifying that, while it is using biometrics to register voters, the actual democratic process to be undergone in 2018 will be conducted by traditional means. In Sierra Leone, meanwhile, a major shipment of biometric elections technology arrived, courtesy of Smartmatic, sending the reassuring message to citizens that its own 2018 general elections will take place.

Sticking with civil biometric ID but moving away from the topic of elections, we reported last week that authorities in Nigeria are intending to use technology from Bio-Metrica to conduct the country’s upcoming census.

Aadhaar

Focusing in specifically on India’s Aadhaar program, we saw the ambitious national ID program make the news in financial and mobile arenas. The government is reportedly considering the linking between Aadhaar to tax returns. Meanwhile, new Aircel subscribers enrolled in Aadhaar are now able to register devices with the MNO via selfie thanks to facial recognition technology.

Biometrics and World Affairs

Crossmatch announced a disaster-relief biometric security solution last week, presenting it at the Action on Disaster Relief conference in Panama City. We also reported an update on the UNHCR’s use of biometric ID for refugees in Chad. Here is how biometrics collided with world issues last week:

Mobile Biometric Innovations

Acuity Market Intelligence released a report last week detailing the massive proliferation of biometric smartphones. The research firm also outlined its predicted top trends for 2017, which included the mainstreaming of mobile iris recognition. The iris modality has long been poised to explode onto the mobile scene, and reports last week concerning the biometric features on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 give indication that the security feature will be shipping on the major flagship smartphone when it launches later this year. Meanwhile, ZTE (with the help of Intel technology) achieved a breakthrough in super-fast facial recognition, and Toshiba launched new notebooks featuring biometric authentication.

Banking and Payments

Biometrics continue to enable self-service financial tech thanks to Diebold-Nixdorf, whose solutions are coming to MCB Islamic Bank Limited in Pakistan. Transmit Security made banking news last week too, announcing its Transmit Security Platform is being deployed by First International Bank of Israel. Shifting to payments news, we took a look at the benefits EyeVerify’s Eyeprint ID brings to the mCommerce space now that Alipay users have access to the authentication option.

Border Control

In border control news last week we saw reports that the Australian government is aiming to make passenger screening at airports 90 percent automated with the help of biometric technology. Speaking of passenger screening, CLEAR is expanding its biometric border control solutions across the US, and Vision-Box is upgrading its biometric deployment in Sint Maarten. Meanwhile, in the UK, it has become acceptable to use mobile photos for passport renewals.

Biometric Security

Scotiabank’s’ new Digital Factory is now in production, and biometric technology is keeping it secure. Last week we also reported on a collaboration between BioConnect and Genetec that is seeing the former’s biometrics technology integrated with the latter’s security platform. Turning our eyes to the future, we learned about a new experimental brainwave biometric technology that can be used for emotions-based access control.

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